Heinzi
10-27-2005, 07:28 AM
Hi
I found that while searching info about the 22nd PD
Enjoy :)
Local man shares memories on 60th anniversary of V-E Day
May 8 2005 12:00AM
By J.D. HILLARD
OF THE REGISTER-PAJARONIAN
http://www.zwire.com/local/Z/ZWIRE1197/zwire/images/VEdamain54.jpg
CORRALITOS - Sixty years ago this weekend, Ray Zager nearly died in Austria, not at the hands of the SS but by almost rolling his jeep, Betsy, into the Enns River.
On a gray day in late April in his home in the woods, Zager recounted the day the dreaded SS offered to help him change a tire. It was May 8, 1945 - V-E Day.
Having shipped over in December 1944, Zager found himself a messenger, driving messages between commanders in Betsy.
"I was lucky. I could drive," he said. Most soldiers walked.
Zager's 71st Division made a name for itself and was swallowed into Gen. George Patton's divisions, which in a few months battled from eastern France, across Germany and into Austria, he said.
When the Germans surrendered, Zager's 1st Battalion had separated from the rest of the 71st Division and followed the German 22nd Panzer Division for about 200 miles.
The U.S. Army had told the 22nd's commanders to surrender to the Russian army, which was holding Vienna a few miles away. However, the Russians had earned a reputation of exacting brutal vengeance on German soldiers, and the commanders of the 22,000-strong German division threatened to destroy the 2,700-man 1st Battalion if it would not accept its surrender, Zager said. The U.S. commanders bowed to the threat and accepted the Germans' surrender offer.
A line of German soldiers in trucks stretched for miles down a road along the Enns, Zager said. The Americans took the Germans' weapons, ordered them to strip, then gave their clothes back. Most German soldiers were soon released and told to go home, Zager said.
Among the German troops were four U.S. airmen whose bomber had been shot down. The German soldiers had been hiding the airmen from the SS, whose officers were known to shoot war prisoners. Zager was driving down the line of German soldiers waiting to surrender, collecting German pistols as war souvenirs, when he encountered one of the airmen.
Zager took the airman back to his captain and was ordered to help bring back the other three, who were still in the hands of the Germans.
Night had fallen by the time he had gathered the other three airmen. Zager turned Betsy around to head back toward the U.S. line, but he blew a tire and lost control and nearly drove over a cliff into the Enns.
Which is how on May 8, 1945, Zager found himself stuck in the dark with a flat tire in front of a German Tiger tank on a road above a steep fall to the Enns River, unarmed and surrounded by thousands of soldiers. Soldiers who, a few days earlier, were trying to kill him.
Zager and the others in the jeep hid all the pistols and their own weapons under the airmen's flight jackets to avoid provoking the Germans. They were replacing the flat tire when four SS officers approached.
"The airmen thought they were going to be killed for sure," Zager said.
As the SS approached, one said, "Can we help you with your tire?"
Meanwhile, the tank and all the hundreds of soldiers behind it were held up by a few Americans in a broken jeep, Zager said.
"I think we were quite lucky that we weren't killed then and there," he said.
Zager didn't take the SS up on their offer.
They asked him if he was afraid of the tank. He said he was.
"You won the war but you afraid?" an SS officer said.
The SS did not kill them. Neither did the tank. Zager finished with the tire on his own and his partner **** Colon drove them back to the American line.
"That was V-E Day," Zager said. "It was quite an exciting day at that."
İRegister-Pajaronian 2005
Source (http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?_adv_prop=web&ei=UTF-8&vp=22nd+Panzer+Division&vp_vt=any&vd=all&vst=0&vf=all&vm=i&fl=0&n=10&u=www.zwire.com/news/newsstory.cfm%3Fnewsid%3D14486538%26title%3D%253Cp%253ELocal+man+shares+memories+on+60th+anniversary+of+V-E+Day%26BRD%3D1197%26PAG%3D461%26CATNAME%3DTop+Stories%26CATEGORYID%3D410&w=%2222nd+panzer+division%22&d=eV1KO2FULhwD&icp=1&.intl=us)
I found that while searching info about the 22nd PD
Enjoy :)
Local man shares memories on 60th anniversary of V-E Day
May 8 2005 12:00AM
By J.D. HILLARD
OF THE REGISTER-PAJARONIAN
http://www.zwire.com/local/Z/ZWIRE1197/zwire/images/VEdamain54.jpg
CORRALITOS - Sixty years ago this weekend, Ray Zager nearly died in Austria, not at the hands of the SS but by almost rolling his jeep, Betsy, into the Enns River.
On a gray day in late April in his home in the woods, Zager recounted the day the dreaded SS offered to help him change a tire. It was May 8, 1945 - V-E Day.
Having shipped over in December 1944, Zager found himself a messenger, driving messages between commanders in Betsy.
"I was lucky. I could drive," he said. Most soldiers walked.
Zager's 71st Division made a name for itself and was swallowed into Gen. George Patton's divisions, which in a few months battled from eastern France, across Germany and into Austria, he said.
When the Germans surrendered, Zager's 1st Battalion had separated from the rest of the 71st Division and followed the German 22nd Panzer Division for about 200 miles.
The U.S. Army had told the 22nd's commanders to surrender to the Russian army, which was holding Vienna a few miles away. However, the Russians had earned a reputation of exacting brutal vengeance on German soldiers, and the commanders of the 22,000-strong German division threatened to destroy the 2,700-man 1st Battalion if it would not accept its surrender, Zager said. The U.S. commanders bowed to the threat and accepted the Germans' surrender offer.
A line of German soldiers in trucks stretched for miles down a road along the Enns, Zager said. The Americans took the Germans' weapons, ordered them to strip, then gave their clothes back. Most German soldiers were soon released and told to go home, Zager said.
Among the German troops were four U.S. airmen whose bomber had been shot down. The German soldiers had been hiding the airmen from the SS, whose officers were known to shoot war prisoners. Zager was driving down the line of German soldiers waiting to surrender, collecting German pistols as war souvenirs, when he encountered one of the airmen.
Zager took the airman back to his captain and was ordered to help bring back the other three, who were still in the hands of the Germans.
Night had fallen by the time he had gathered the other three airmen. Zager turned Betsy around to head back toward the U.S. line, but he blew a tire and lost control and nearly drove over a cliff into the Enns.
Which is how on May 8, 1945, Zager found himself stuck in the dark with a flat tire in front of a German Tiger tank on a road above a steep fall to the Enns River, unarmed and surrounded by thousands of soldiers. Soldiers who, a few days earlier, were trying to kill him.
Zager and the others in the jeep hid all the pistols and their own weapons under the airmen's flight jackets to avoid provoking the Germans. They were replacing the flat tire when four SS officers approached.
"The airmen thought they were going to be killed for sure," Zager said.
As the SS approached, one said, "Can we help you with your tire?"
Meanwhile, the tank and all the hundreds of soldiers behind it were held up by a few Americans in a broken jeep, Zager said.
"I think we were quite lucky that we weren't killed then and there," he said.
Zager didn't take the SS up on their offer.
They asked him if he was afraid of the tank. He said he was.
"You won the war but you afraid?" an SS officer said.
The SS did not kill them. Neither did the tank. Zager finished with the tire on his own and his partner **** Colon drove them back to the American line.
"That was V-E Day," Zager said. "It was quite an exciting day at that."
İRegister-Pajaronian 2005
Source (http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?_adv_prop=web&ei=UTF-8&vp=22nd+Panzer+Division&vp_vt=any&vd=all&vst=0&vf=all&vm=i&fl=0&n=10&u=www.zwire.com/news/newsstory.cfm%3Fnewsid%3D14486538%26title%3D%253Cp%253ELocal+man+shares+memories+on+60th+anniversary+of+V-E+Day%26BRD%3D1197%26PAG%3D461%26CATNAME%3DTop+Stories%26CATEGORYID%3D410&w=%2222nd+panzer+division%22&d=eV1KO2FULhwD&icp=1&.intl=us)